


Fog

by peaceloveandjocularity, stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26011312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaceloveandjocularity/pseuds/peaceloveandjocularity, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: A supply run in the fog leads to a change in perspective.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Fog

The road - such that it was - unspooled in a series of tight knots that quickly became switchbacks. This would have been unnerving enough, but army built roads lacked shoulders (Klinger had even cracked a joke about their inability to wear gowns with straps); on one side was a flinty mountain; on the other was a ravine. Stretched out before them was jungle-wet night and the possibility of enemy gunfire… all concealed by ghostly shelves of fog.

Charles Emerson Winchester III spared a look for his driver, navigating by two headlights the size of plums, their wan glow meant to aid in concealment from any hostiles that might be hidden in the brush. “Corporal, you’re quite certain you can get us safely out of these hills?”

“Positive. I make this run all the time.” 

Klinger certainly didn’t _sound_ worried, but Charles didn’t like to think of those trips that had come before: the Corporal’s thin, fine form guiding a metal hulk through dangerous darkness, his legs covered by nothing more substantial than a skirt. Klinger shouldn’t have been in Korea period, end of sentence. To send him alone in an unreliable vehicle in the dark to get supplies… it nearly made the surgeon shudder. 

Taking his grim-faced silence for fear, Klinger reached over and startled him by squeezing one of his large hands in his much smaller ones. “Don’t worry, Major.” 

Charles extracted himself. “Hands on the wheel, please.” 

Klinger laughed, unoffended. “I don’t need both, but if you want to deprive yourself…” 

Charles actually _felt_ his eyes make a rush at the sockets, bulging. “Corporal…” he said warningly. 

“Just offering, Major. You seem tense.”

Charles would never have admitted it - not even for transfer to Tokyo - but Klinger’s flirtations (often bald, sometimes ribald) - had a way of cheering him. No one else, barring Honoria, had ever gotten close enough to him _to_ tease him - and Klinger was less of a brat than his sister… though decidedly more of a menace. Of course, Charles had never tried to beat the Corporal at his own game. Sexual matters - indeed, what he took for the average person’s preoccupation with sex - flustered him nearly beyond belief. But it was a dark night, the heated pavement crossed and recrossed by snakes and amphibians that Klinger mercifully tried to spare death by flattening. Teasing back _might_ be fun. 

“You know,” he began, pretending to look away into the dark, “ _I_ have two free hands.” 

He felt Klinger turn - fast! - to try to read him. “Major?” This was new and exciting, but he tried not to read too much into it… and not to start breathing too rapidly. 

“Now, I am only a humble Harvard graduate, but I do believe that I’ve cracked the code of your incredibly subtle insinuations. Am I correct in thinking that there is more of me that you wish to touch than my fingertips?” 

Klinger made a sharp, keening sound and Charles rotated his finger to indicate he should turn right back around. “Eyes on the road, Corporal.” 

Klinger swallowed audibly before admitting - very quietly and with more sincerity than Charles was prepared for - “I’d be happy with anything, Major. Fingertips,” he mumbled happily, sounding a little giddy, perhaps? Charles couldn’t tell - “Would be just fine forever if that was all that was available.” 

Charles had intended to make the Corporal blush, but he was now pretty warm himself. Still, it was possible that Klinger was just provoking him, right? He tried, once more, to be playful. “And if the offer came from someone else? Pierce, perhaps? One of the nurses?” 

Klinger smiled then; it was a new form of play, but, to his mind, that meant that his relationship with Winchester was evolving - and he looked forward to every change and iteration that Charles would permit. He did keep his eyes on the road; the fog had thickened and his blue-white headlights were no match for it at all - more like will-o-wisps than American-made glass and circuits. “Are you asking me if I’m a tramp, sir?” 

“Only gauging whether or not you are, ah, selective?” 

“Oh, very, Major. I’ve been waiting for you all my life.” His brow furrowed as they descended a particularly tricky set of turns; Charles gripped the seat’s edge. Then they were safely back on the flat and Klinger shot him a look. “No joking, Major. Not about this.” 

Charles took one of his hands and gently laid it in his lap. 

“What are you doing?” 

“It seems… it seems I am, ah, ending your wait. If you’re certain you can do this safely?” 

“Still drive, you mean? Definitely.” His fierce grin brightened the interior of the jeep. His speed never even changed - the speed of the jeep, anyway. 

Afterward, Winchester asked him to stop the jeep. 

“Major, there are night patrols. It isn’t safe.”

“Then may I prevail upon you to stop just beyond the camp?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Because once we are _in_ the camp, our communal living arrangements will prohibit me from seeing to you in the manner that I intend and which you deserve.” 

“I have my own tent, Major.”

He’d quite forgotten. “Then do be a good girl and invite me in when we arrive.”

Klinger squeaked. 

“Corporal, what was that?”

“A noise I didn’t mean to make.”

“Certainly.” He looked shrewd, quietly pleased. “But _why_ did you make it? 

Klinger shot him a please-don’t-make-me-say-it look. 

“Something I said?”

The Corporal nodded. 

“Ah. I see. A preferred form of address?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Charles repeated.

“I like…” he knew he might lose everything but it was the truth, _his_ truth. “I like to be, uhm, _both_ , Major. A-a girl… sometimes. A guy sometimes. I don’t want to change anything.” He gestured at his body. “But I like to look pretty and wear pretty things.” 

Charles took his hand. “I see. The question that remains then, Maxwell, is if you - all versions are encouraged- will allow me into your bed.” 

He actually did stop driving then, the engine coughing once before it quieted. “You don’t care?”

“Care? Quite a bit. These expressions please you and you please _me_ . If you mean do I _mind_ , I certainly do not. You’ve been appearing in costume since the first day we met. Why should I mind now?”

Klinger narrowed his eyes at him.“That started out nice and kinda became a grammar lesson, Major.” 

“Apologies. I have not… this is new to me.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured.” His eyes sparkled. He’d had to steal glances, but he’d seen enough when the Major let go to know it had been awhile. “Thanks for trusting me.”

“You are, ah, very welcome. You did no less with me. You’ve never expressed that before, have you? Your wish to exist between identities?”

“No. You might not think much of my nose, Major, but I like it right where it is and all in one piece. It’s not the kind of thing you can say real easy, to anyone.”

“But you took the chance with me?”

“Yeah, well, I figured if we were gonna start this thing, we’d start it for real, with the truth. I think you know all the other stuff - serial number, half a dozen reasons you’re probably making a mistake…”

This was curious. It seemed that Klinger’s flirtatiousness had some bravado thrown in, and that just made Charles admire him more. “Do remind me.”

Klinger opened his mouth and Charles laid his palm over it. “Skip the serial number.”

“We’ve been doing this too long, Major. You’re ruining my best lines.”

“That we will find other equally pleasurable forms of entertainment, I do not doubt. For instance, you may kiss my fingers like that for days if you’d like. May I ask how you knew how to do that?” 

Klinger brightened. “No one’s ever done that for you? You’re a surgeon- figured you have to have sensitive hands.”

 _I really must stop insulting your intelligence._ “There has not been much of anyone to do much of anything for me. You will find my experience limited, I fear, but I learn quickly. Unless you insist on telling me why I should not.” 

Klinger pushed back against desires he’d long suppressed- even in fantasy. It didn’t feel right to make use of a man for his pleasure when that man was sleeping right across the compound and had no idea he was being imagined into positions he probably didn’t believe possible. “You know why. You’re out of my league and my price range. I can’t give you kids to carry on the family legacy or add money to your accounts. I’m not educated and English isn’t my first language. People here either think I’m funny and harmless or a nut job. Oh, and it’s illegal and the kind of thing that might cause you to lose your job or get beat up if the wrong people find out.” 

“May I counter?”

“It’s not debate class, sir. Say whatever you want.”

Charles rested a hand on his thigh, fingers pointed to the inside. It was a small trespass given what Klinger had done with _his_ free hand, but he felt the smaller man register it and try not to move in response. Hunger, he realized; that was what he could feel in the Corporal’s skin. “As for the matter of my family, I did not choose them and I imagine you have had much more happiness of yours, breeding or no. I want nothing from you but your friendship and your priceless heart. You outsmart me continually as it is and you can sweet talk me in any language you please - I think I can gather your meaning from the sheer _sound_ of you. As for the army - they haven’t ejected you yet.” Having dispensed these objections, he asked, “Shall I tell you, my dear, why _you_ should turn me down?”

Klinger actually tapped the break at this, a physical punctuation to his feelings. “What could you possibly…” 

Charles turned to face him, serious as if before the bar, or an altar. “Among my many flaws, and when you meet Honoria I am sure she will supplement the list, those which should most give you pause are my arrogance, my inability to allow anyone in, and my limited understanding of the world beyond the stifling one in which I have existed. Furthermore, I suppress my feelings whenever possible, I tend to shrink from physical affection in any form, and I have, until this East Asian nightmare, always relied on money to solve my problems, so perseverance is not my great gift.”

Klinger pretended applause. “That was like one of those speeches out of those plays you like - what do you call it?”

“A monologue?”

“Yeah. You got it printed on a card somewhere or something?”

“Just in my mind.”

“I’ll help you,” the younger man vowed, “start thinking other things. Better things. Like, yeah, maybe you think a lot of yourself - but maybe you _should_ , Major. I’ve seen you bring people back to life. You just let me way in - unless I was just dreaming about unzipping your pants. And you didn’t seem to mind me touching you - but we can go slow as you want if you want - I don’t wanna to scare you. You say you’re still stuck in your high class world, but look at all you’ve done here! Stuff you probably didn’t know you ever could! Aren’t you proud of that? Your money didn’t save all those people - you did.”

Klinger sounded proud of him. Maybe he always had been. 

“The fog is clearing,” Charles said, seeing the glow of the camp before them. 

“Good.” Klinger cozied up next to him, knowing he meant more than it seemed. “That’s real good, Major.” 

End! 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
